


Reconciliation

by rasenna



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Harder When You're On The Run And The Galaxy Is In Chaos, Past Character Death, Raising Kids Is Hard, small Children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11925882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rasenna/pseuds/rasenna
Summary: Anakin arrives at Chancellor Palpatine’s office too late: There are three dead Jedi and a Sith on the floor.Padmé dies in childbirth anyway.So Anakin is left with this: self-exile from the Jedi Order; two newborn children; a lightsaber; a meager severance; and a hell of a lot of bitterness.This is the story of Anakin Skywalker’s forty days in the desert with his children, searching for water.





	Reconciliation

Anakin counts the days. 

 

He is working as a mechanic in a colony-city on the jungle world of Minapel. He doesn’t make much, but it’s all right. He’s gotten good at hunting and foraging for their dinners rather than buying in the Minape market so that he can save to buy a ticket off Minapel. 

 

He tries not to think about what Obi-Wan would say if his master caught him using his lightsaber only for hunting common Minape jungle animals or for cutting wood. He’s gotten good at avoiding thoughts of Obi-Wan, for the most part. 

 

Today he is cutting firewood, heedless of the thunderstorm approaching from the horizon. Minapel is humid and temperate, the exact opposite of the planet of his youth; but it still has a colder rainy season, which has nearly begun. He will need the wood, and badly. 

 

The twins are down for their midday nap, and if one of them wakes up, he’ll feel it in the Force. He’s been learning many unconventional uses for his Jedi training -- like putting the Living Force itself on baby monitor duty. 

 

The only sounds in the ears of Anakin Skywalker -- former Jedi Knight, widower, and father of two -- are the Minape  _ quaa _ birds’ obnoxious chatter and the hum of his lightsaber. He focuses on the simple chopping motions perhaps more than he needs to, but it distracts him from the whispers of temptation to  _ do _ something, to escape from the inertia of a simple life chopping at wood and not at Separatist droids. 

 

After he’s deemed that he has enough wood for the day, Anakin stands, wiping the sweat from his brow with a rag torn from one of his spare tunics. 

 

He would not be recognizable to any of his fellow Knights, only three-sixty-three standard days from the last time he saw a Jedi. Gone are the robes, gone is the air of control. He is tired, and his hair has grown long enough that he wears it bound by a leather thong. If he lets it grow for another month, he might be able to braid it after the fashion of Minape human males. He hasn’t let his facial hair go past stubble, though, for he was never one for a beard, unlike -- 

 

Anakin shies away from the thought of Obi-Wan Kenobi. When he left the Order, he had practically  _ run _ , not wanting to see the judgement on his Master’s face. He half-hopes, even now, that he will never see Obi-Wan again.

 

Grimly, Anakin hoists an armful of firewood and begins carrying it back to their little treehouse. A house in the sky, for the Skywalker family. A house in the sky, far from the last vestiges of the Clone Wars. 

 

As Anakin enters the treehouse and places the wood in the basket by the door, he allows his mind to relax into the familiar exhausted calculations of survival, first learned in the slave quarters of Tatooine. A week more of cutting wood, and they’ll be stocked for the wet season. Two more months of this, of meager pay, and they might be off this world.

 

Suddenly, Anakin feels a twinge in the Force, and all thoughts of budget fall out of his head; he runs to the makeshift nursery. 

 

His hand falls to his belt, and then he curses, for he had put his lightsaber down in the hallway. Gone are the days when he was constantly being shot at, gone are the days when he had needed to be a warrior. He has grown careless.

 

Anakin stops short in the doorway of the nursery, cold fear gripping the spine of the former Hero With No Fear. _ Something _ crouches in the window, eyes glinting at him out of the shadows. 

 

The first crackle of lightning from the approaching storm illuminates it just enough for him to see that it is vaguely humanoid, with flat pale-green features and silvery talons that dig into the rough wood windowsill. It has a headdress of sorts, bound out of the feathers of the  _ quaa _ birds and varicolored beads. Its large eyes are a luminous blue-green, bisected by a starburst of a pupil.

 

The children are still asleep, and the creature seems to have no true intent to harm them...yet. Anakin holds still, durasteel fist clenching and unclenching slowly with a tiny whine of servomotors, as the creature gazes at him. 

 

Thunder rolls again in the distance, and another few seconds pass before the creature pours itself down from the windowsill with fluid grace and pads closer to Luke’s and Leia’s beds. Not taking its eyes off of him, it brushes one taloned hand first on Leia’s head and then Luke’s, as if checking for a fever. 

 

Anakin’s breath catches at the talons’ presence only a few centimeters from his son’s and daughter’s eyes, then releases when it retracts its hand to rest on the edge of Leia’s cradle. 

 

“You are their father,” the creature says, in a voice that is neither male nor female, and which has a curious echo to it. “Such small beings, but ones with the future in their veins.” Their teeth, in the gray light of the encroaching storm, are very sharp. 

 

Anakin licks suddenly dry lips. In the Force, the creature glows in the odd way that powerful non-Jedi Force users do. “Yes. I’m Anakin,” he says. “And you are?”

 

“I am Mika-hati of the Crownfire clan. I have been assigned to watch you and your small ones. You are without clan, Anakin Son-of-Suns.” 

 

“Yes,” Anakin agrees, not revealing his surprise at the epithet. “I nearly betrayed my --my people,” he says haltingly, “and I left because I was no longer the same once I realized that.”

 

Mika-hati tilts their head at him, and blinks. “You are without clan, and you have two small ones. Where is your mate? Surely they would have gone with you, if you left your people?” 

 

“Dead,” Anakin says bleakly.

 

Mika-hati makes a sudden gesture, a soft clap with knuckles interlaced. It seems to Anakin to be a sympathy-gesture of sorts. “I am sorry,” they say simply.

 

They visibly hesitate before adding, “My clanmother sent me to decide if you and your small ones would be invited to join the Crownfire clan, if only temporarily. The storms are nearly upon us, and you do not know the ways of the forest. Other clans might have left you to die, especially since you are not of our kind, but our future-seekers have decided it would be better for you to live with us than die alone.” 

 

Anakin glances at his children, then back up at the -- well, he still doesn’t know precisely  _ what _ Mika-hati is. Even though logically he ought to stay and earn his wages in town, the Force is nudging at him. A clan of powerful Force-users, willing to take him and the twins in and show them how to survive. 

 

And something about the way Mika-hati speaks reminds him of the way women had spoken the wisdom of the Wind-mother on Tatooine. Oracular and strange, yet kind.

 

Anakin gives a short nod. “I will need time to make my last arrangements,” he says. “But then -- yes.”

 

Mika-hati bows their head. “At suns’ setting, then, Son-of-Suns.”


End file.
